Oscars 2010 liveblog: the 82nd Academy Awards as it happened

The Hurt Locker was the big winner at this year's Oscars, emerging with six, including Kathryn Bigelow's history-making award for best director as well as best picture. Here's how Xan Brooks liveblogged the night

11.45pm: The 82nd annual Academy Awards begin with a carpet. This carpet is richly red and freshly laundered. It is guarded by security goons and bathed in spotlights.

Up the carpet come the early arrivals: the nominated and the not nominated and the milling dignitaries who don't seem quite sure where they are going. Some simple compass points: the street is behind them and the Kodak theatre is up ahead. After that you're on your own.

Few of these arrivals are as early as Mariah Carey, who breezily explains that she is on "Mariah Time". This presumably means that she can come and go as she pleases, and may well decide to take a nap in the middle of the ceremony if the mood takes her.

As for us, we are (as the time-stamp suggests) working on Greenwich Mean Time. This is on account of us sitting in a deserted office in nocturnal London as opposed to, say, living it up in sun-drenched LA. One day, God willing, we shall all be living on Mariah Time too. But sadly not this year.

0.05am: It transpires that the route up the carpet is fraught with danger. In order to access their seats inside the Kodak theatre, the millionaire guests must first run the gauntlet of the neon-bright presenters from Sky and E!. These presenters lie in wait and then ambush them, knee-capping the talent with brazen flattery and well-oiled platitudes. It's like a celebrity version of British Bulldog.

Out in the sunshine, the likes of James Cameron, Quentin Tarantino and Carey Mulligan are subjected to a potent charm offensive. When the Roman emperors made their triumphant entrance, they were escorted by a slave whose job it was to whisper "Remember, you are mortal" into their ears. This, supposedly, ensured that they kept their feet on the ground.

The guests at the 82nd Academy Awards, by contrast, are greeted by presenters such as Angela Griffin, who tells Mulligan that she is "very lovely", Nick Park that he is "amazing" and Cameron that his wife is "a goddess". In this way they are wafted into the Kodak theatre with their egos swollen to the size of Texas, perfectly primed for prime-time humiliation.

"It's your night tonight," Griffin confesses to Sandra Bullock, who is up for the best actress award. "It's everybody's night," shoots back canny Bullock, unwilling to be lured.

"Ha ha ha!" says Griffin. "Ha ha ha!"

0.20am: You want celebrities on this red carpet? By God, you shall have them. Here we see Penélope Cruz and Sarah Jessica Parker, Antonio Banderas and Melanie Griffith. Griffin duly buttonholes Parker (who kindly explains that she is wearing a dress by Chanel), while Christopher Plummer (Oscar-nominated for The Last Station) stands obediently to one side. One day, perhaps, some smart producer will cast these two in some kind of rom-com. They look so good together.

A moment later, Griffin moves on to talk to Precious director Lee Daniels, who has shown up with his daughter. I was half hoping that Griffin would tell Daniels to remember that he is mortal. Instead, she tells him that he is the best father in the whole wide world. Daniels beams happily at that.

"Ha ha ha!" says Griffin, who then goes on to explain that she "keeps screaming". Surely this is cause for concern. My fear is that she may well be suffering a nervous breakdown, right there beneath the floodlights.

0.40am: Alarming news. Fresh from confiding that she "keeps on screaming", the excitable Ms Griffin has just announced that she "can't hear myself think, what with all the screaming going on". What does she mean by this? That the demons in her own head have now grown so loud and insistent that they are drowning out everything else? Or that her own nervous collapse is somehow contagious and has infected all those around her? The second option, I think, is probably the more terrifying. It suggests that this whole impeccably mounted event may be on the brink of pitching into outright chaos.

Soldiering gamely on, Griffin accosts George Clooney who is thankfully not screaming yet. Clooney is nominated for best actor for Up in the Air, but promptly confesses that "Jeff Bridges is going to win".

Seconds later and here's the man himself. Bridges has been nominated four times before but is this year's heavy favourite to take the award for his turn as a broken-down country singer in Crazy Heart. "I'm not counting any chickens," he says, like the polished old pro that he is.

0.55am: The ceremony has yet to begin and we already have a bona fide British success story. This story goes by the name of Hamish Hamilton, who looks like Chris Evans's wholesome younger brother and is apparently "the director of this year's Oscars". He explains what an honour it is to be here. "Ha ha ha," says Griffin.

Thanks for your comments so far, even the ones that seem to be accusing me of living on Mariah Time and not posting regularly enough. Mercurey suggests that George Clooney is wearing a wig. In the immortal, eloquent words of Angela Griffin: "Ha ha ha!"

Right, it seems that the carpet is emptying out, which means that the Kodak theatre must be filling up. Are we to take this to mean that the 82nd Academy Awards are about to start?

1.05am: More alarming news: it seems I spoke too soon. The 82nd Academy Awards are not beginning just yet, perhaps because the guests are still assembling behind closed doors, fighting over their seats and firing air kisses across the aisle.

Just time for a swift preamble. This year's best picture shortlist runs to 10 films for the first time since 1943 (when Casablanca took the prize). Even so, the event comes billed as a straight contest between David and Goliath, aka Avatar and The Hurt Locker, which lead the field with nine nominations apiece. Lagging just a nose behind is Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds with eight nominations. Tarantino's reinvented second world war history lesson would dearly love to play the role of spoiler and looks set for at least one major award, with German actor Christoph Waltz the firm favourite to win best supporting actor.

Our hosts for the event are Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin, who were last seen together in It's Complicated, a teeth-grinding, reputed comedy by Nancy Meyers. The only way is up for Steve and Alec.

1.20am: "It's time for a break," says Claudia Winkleman, reclining on a Barbarella space-pod chair inside the Sky television studio. But a break from what, exactly? A break from the break, I suppose. Time to make like Mariah and grab a quick 40 winks.

Interesting thoughts, in the meantime, from DanAshcroft on why The Hurt Locker will win and Avatar won't. Elsewhere AnthonyFarrantHeel speculates that Morgan Freeman is drunk. I truly hope this is so, if only to liven up the ceremony. What kind of drunk do you think Freeman would be? A violent marauder, or the maudlin, tactile type who keeps asking everyone to go on holiday with him?

For the record, Angela Griffin is back to tell us her "absolute highlight" of the night so far. Her highlight, it transpires, was Sarah Jessica Parker, because she is "so in love with her".

Griffin refrains from telling us what her lowlight was, though I think we all know what it was. The screaming, of course. The constant, horrible screaming. There was a moment back there when she very nearly lost it.

1.35am: At long last, "it's the Oscars". And it begins, bizarrely enough, with a musical preamble, in which the nominees for best actor and best actress stand motionless on the stage, grinning sheepishly into the cameras like contestants on some debased Blind Date spin-off.

After what feels like an eternity, various men and women run up on stage to claim them. At first I think that these are the "dates" and that they will all be back next week to tell us how it's gone. "Meryl was a lovely girl but, I don't know, there wasn't really any spark. I'd like to see her again, but only as a friend." But no – it turns out that these are just "helpers", on hand to escort the stars back to their allocated seats.

As soon as that's over, Neil Patrick Harris (aka Doogie Howser) steps up to sing a song. All at once, the Blind Date spin-off doesn't look so bad after all.

1.45am: It's official. Oscar hosts Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin are a hell of a lot funnier here than they were in It's Complicated. Their routine pokes amiable, irreverent fun at the nominated films and star contenders. They drip faint praise on the likes of The Last Station and Invictus. Baldwin points out that Martin is a huge fan of Invictus because "it combines his two biggest passions – rugby and tensions between blacks and whites".

It goes, as pretty much everyone said it would, to Christoph Waltz for his flamboyant, lip-smacking turn as the "Jew hunter" Nazi colonel in Inglourious Basterds.

A fortnight ago at the Baftas, Waltz gave a lengthy and eloquent speech about how he was a "supported actor" as opposed to a supporting one. Here, he appears pinched by the 45-second curfew and rattles through a hasty thanks. Then off he goes, clutching the final award of his glittering awards season; his crowning moment over almost before it begun.

2.05am: Time now for the Oscar for best animated feature, another of those awards that seemed to have been decided sometime last November. Suffice to say it does not go to The Secret of Kells.

Instead it goes to Up, Pixar's buoyant, beautifully made yarn about a curmudgeonly old widower who floats off in search of adventure. Director Pete Docter steps up to collect this one and duly pays tribute to his wife and kids who are, he says, "his best adventure". Is this a diplomatic way of saying that the kids are a bit of a handful? Ah well, that's Hollywood offspring for you.

2.10am: The red carpet is a distant memory, shrieking Angela Griffin has been left with her demons and the Oscars are coming thick and fast right now. The gong for best original song goes to The Weary Kind from Crazy Heart.

It is collected by writers T-Bone Burnett and Ryan Bingham, who gives thanks to his wife and says: "I love you more than rainbows, baby." This strikes me as a little harsh on the rainbows and makes me wonder just how many rainbows he has actually witnessed, because some of them are truly, deeply wonderful and all that. The colours, man. The colours. Still, we'll let it go for now.

Incidentally, isn't "Ryan Bingham" the name of the character that George Clooney plays in Up in the Air? All of a sudden these Oscars are starting to blur; the line between fiction and reality warping and breaking down. Next I'll be wondering if T-Bone Burnett was actually the name of the seductive, lingerie-wearing muse that Penélope Cruz played in Nine. Already I'm starting to believe that it was. The best bit of that entire film was the scene in which T-Bone Burnett writhed on that four-poster bed and stuck his bum in the air.

2.20am: Tina Fey and Robert Downey Jr swing their way through a sharp, funny routine before handing the best original screenplay Oscar to Mark Boal for The Hurt Locker. It's the first award of the night for Kathryn Bigelow's superbly tense and bruising Iraq war drama. But we're betting it won't be the last.

At the podium, Boal dedicates the prize to the troops still stationed in Iraq and Afghanistan and to his father, who passed away a month ago. His voice quavers a bit at this point, but the 45-second rule comes to his aid and he is whisked safely off the stage. Who knows: this may well be the first entirely tear-free Academy Awards – and all on account of that pesky time constraint.

2.35am: "Right now, we would like to introduce two beautiful actresses," says Steve Martin. "Because frankly, we are sick of bringing out all these ugly actresses."

These particular actresses, for the record, are Carey Mulligan out of An Education and Zoe Saldana, who looks much shorter than she did in Avatar, and is also less blue, and doesn't appear to have a tail either, although it's obviously hard to tell under that dress she is wearing. They are here to announce the winner of the award for best animated short. The winner is Logorama, by the Frenchman Nicholas Schmerkin. He explains that a lot of work went into making Logorama and adds that he hopes to return with a full-length animated feature in about 36 years.

2.40am: The Oscars are coming at a mile a minute. Music for Prudence scoops best documentary short and its makers joust briefly at the microphone before the music swells up and drowns them out.

Seconds later, The New Tenants takes the Oscar for best "live action" short. Again, two makers step up to accept the prize but this time there is no jousting. One man hogs the mic and makes his speech. Finally, the other chap gets his chance and hoves up to the podium just as the music starts playing. His mouth is moving but his sound has been cut. He had a message for the world, but the world will now never know what it was. Was it something important? He looked as though it might have been important.

All made up … Ben Stiller in Avatar costume presents the Oscar for makeup to Star Trek's Mindy Hall. Photograph: Kevin Winter/Getty Images

Hey ho, too late now. He's bundled off the stage and we're on to the award for best makeup. Ben Stiller is here and he is dressed as a Na'vi! The makeup Oscar goes to Barney Burman, Mindy Hall and Joel Harlow for Star Trek! They have something to say! It is not particularly important!

2.55am: "Who's that?" demands my esteemed colleague Jason Solomons of the lissome presenter of this year's best adapted screenplay award. We think that it is Rachel McAdams, and she is indeed looking glorious. Coincidentally, this is the exact same question that Rachel McAdams asks whenever she sees Jason reviewing the movies on telly. "Who's that?" she demands, sitting bolt upright in her jacuzzi. "Who's that?" Exact same question.

The Oscar goes to Geoffrey Fletcher for Precious. This is a surprise for most of the onlookers. It also seems to be a surprise for Fletcher himself, who chokes up charmingly at the podium. "I'm drying up right now," he croaks. He can barely get the words out and the 45-second limit yawns like an eternity before him.

"I wrote that script for him," boasts Steve Martin afterwards.

3.05am: Time now for the best supporting actress Oscar. It goes (as it did at the Globes and then again at the Baftas) to Mo'Nique for her tour-de-force in Precious.

Glad to see that Mo'Nique has decided to show up tonight. At the Baftas she sent director Lee Daniels to collect the award on her behalf. This, surely, is just one step up from requesting that they simply Fed-Ex the thing to her agent.

On stage, Mo'Nique gives thanks to Hattie McDaniel, the first African-American performer to ever win an Academy Award (for Gone With the Wind, back in 1939). Didn't George Clooney also reference McDaniel at this event a few years back? Maybe there should be a posthumous award for the most cited former Oscar winner. McDaniel, on recent evidence, would walk it.

3.10am: Two whole hours into the Oscar telecast and here it is: the first award for Avatar. It's for art direction and is read out by Sigourney Weaver, which might lead some to smell a rat. Wasn't Weaver, like, in Avatar? Now here she is assuring us that, yes, it did really win this Oscar. That's like asking David Cameron to call the upcoming election, live on the BBC.

My advice to the rival nominees: make sure you check the envelope. We could have the first big scandal of this year's event, playing out right under Weaver's nose.

Moving swiftly on, British designer Sandy Powell picks up the costume award for her work on The Young Victoria. Some winners are overcome by emotion and others, it seems, could barely give a stuff.

"I've already got two of these," says Powell with a shrug. She's like an unimpressed kid who's just unwrapped her third flower-press on Christmas morning. Yes, she's prepared to thank Auntie Margaret, but her heart's not really in it.

3.25am: Now up come Twilight stars Taylor Lautner and and Kristen Stewart to introduce a montage of American horror movies (of which Twilight is apparently one). Surely this is the first time that Night of the Living Dead and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre have appeared on an Oscar telecast – and it's about time too.

Some colleagues in the office seem purely flummoxed by it. "Why is this going on?" asks Paul MacInnes, who is sitting opposite. I'm guessing he means the horror montage as opposed to, you know, the whole shebang. The endless parade of Oscars. The endless telecast. The endless entrances and exits.

Why is it going on? Is there any point to any of it?

Oh, hang on: just remembered. Woo-hoo! It's all about the epic battle between Avatar and The Hurt Locker. And right here, right now, The Hurt Locker appears to be edging ahead. Bigelow's film has just picked up its second award of the night – for sound editing.

And then, seconds later, it's three gongs for The Hurt Locker as it wins in the sister category of sound mixing. And look, here's Ray Beckett back again to collect this one too. "This is a bit embarrassing," he admits. At this rate, he'll be back up to claim this year's best actress Oscar too.

3.40am: Hisses of dissatisfaction in the Guardian office as Mauro Fiore scoops the cinematography Oscar for his work on Avatar. The general hope was that Barry Ackroyd would get this for The Hurt Locker (and, by implication, all the other great films he's shot). Sadly it was not to be.

Next up it's Demi Moore. "Now it is the time when we celebrate life," she says. I figured that's what we'd been doing all night, but that just shows how much I know. Instead, it's time for the annual Oscar obituary montage, which this year comes serenaded by James Taylor. The recently deceased flick past in a blur. Behind Taylor's vocals, it is just possible to pick out the applause for certain favoured souls; for Budd Schulberg and Karl Malden, for Brittany Murphy and Natasha Richardson. Others, meanwhile, take their final bow to a stony silence, which seems a little harsh. Thank heavens they're not around to witness it.

So far as I can work out, the biggest burst of applause goes to Michael Jackson. Back in the studio, the Sky pundits appear quite enamoured of the obituary montage. "It's a great career move," says one. "You will shift units."

3.50am: Dance routines. What would Oscar night be without a big, razzle-dazzle dance routine? Probably 10 minutes shorter and immeasurably more satisfying. But never mind, here comes this year's edition. Let's accentuate the positive. Some of the numbers are quite acrobatic. We see a girl in a spinning skirt and a man jumping about in a grandad cardigan. In the tribute to Pixar's Up, the pace slows down and the performers stand about and twitch their heads, like androids trying to pass themselves off as village idiots. The dance wraps up with a standing ovation. At least I think it's a standing ovation. It may well be another bit of the dance.

Then whoops, we're back to the actual awards. Michael Giacchino wins best original score for Up. Fortunately he does not stand stock-still and make like a robot.

4am: Top of the hour and the main contestants are neck and neck. The Hurt Locker has three awards and now Avatar has three awards, having just taken the gong for best visual effects. So they swing into the final stretch, locked dead level. This, surely, is the sort of finish the Oscar organisers could only have dreamed of.

4.05am: Here comes Matt Damon ("Maaat Daay-man") to present the award for best documentary feature. This looks a particularly strong category this year, but then maybe it is every year. We've got Burma VJ, The Cove, Food Inc, Which Way Home and The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers.

In the event, the Oscar goes to the gripping eco-documentary The Cove. You'd have to be employed by the Japanese fishing industry to have a problem with that.

4.10am: The deadlock is broken as The Hurt Locker takes the editing award and squeaks ahead, four Oscars to three. The acceptance speeches are over in the blink of an eye.

"Please welcome Keanu Reeves," pleads a disembodied voice on the PA as the Matrix star trots forward to run us through another best picture montage. Why did they feel the need to do this? Did they worry that we wouldn't (welcome him, that is)? Was there perhaps a time a few years back when Keanu bounded on stage, all excited and happy to be there, only to be left reeling from a tornado of catcalls, boos and hisses. So now the organisers are taking no chances. "Please welcome Keanu," entreats the voice. "Have mercy. Give him a chance." Happily they do. They indulgently welcome Keanu Reeves.

4.20am: What is it with the Academy voters and the best foreign language film Oscar? Every year they buck the trend and go for the warmest, lightest, most non-threatening film they can find. Last year's contest was billed as a straight fight between The Class and Waltz with Bashir, only for the voters to give the prize to the wry Japanese comedy Departures.

This year's battle was surely between Michael Haneke's The White Ribbon and Jacques Audiard's A Prophet - both of which seem to have cleaned up everywhere else over the past 10 months or so. Sure enough, it goes to an Argentinean film called The Secret in Her Eyes. "I want to thank the Academy for not considering Na'Vi a foreign language," quips the director. OK, so I have yet to see The Secret in Her Eyes and maybe it's brilliant. Until then, this result strikes me as more than a little perverse.

4.35am: A quintet of celebrity guests line up to heap praise on this year's best actor nominees. Michelle Pfeiffer loves Jeff Bridges and Vera Farmiga lobbies for George Clooney. Julianne Moore just adores Colin Firth it is left to Tim Robbins to puncture the reverential mood, recalling his first meeting with Morgan Freeman, when the great man turned to him and spoke these words of wisdom: "The secret of being a good friend is fetching a good cup of coffee. Will you do that for me, Ted?"

Then up comes Kate Winslet to read out the winning name. And the winning name is .... Jeff Bridges for Crazy Heart.

It is fifth time lucky for the veteran actor, a man who has been so good for so long that we have sometimes risked taking him for granted. He bounds up like Baloo the Bear and then starts whooping at the rafters. Bridges offers genial thanks to his late parents, and to the cast and crew on his film. He also thanks T-Bone Burnett, who is of course best remembered for his saucy supporting role in the musical Nine, where he wriggled about on a bed in his underwear and stuck his bum in the air. At least I think I have that right.

And then, finally it's a big Bridges thank-you to the wife and the kids. His speech wildly overruns the 45-second running time, but that's OK. He's taken his sweet time getting there and more than deserves his moment in the sun. If they'd given him an hour, it would have been fine by me.

4.50am: Another quintet of celebrities; another quintet of acting nominees. Forest Whitaker plays the role of hushed supplicant to Sandra Bullock. Michael Sheen lobs flirty, twinkling compliments at Helen Mirren. Peter Saarsgard seems to quite like Carey Mulligan (not too much; just enough) and Oprah Winfrey proceeds to sell Gabourey Sidibe ("a true American Cinderella!") to the public like so much soap powder.

Last but not least, Stanley Tucci professes his undying love for Meryl Streep, but admits that he is pushing for the number of nominations for each actor to be henceforth capped at 16, just to keep her off the stage and give someone else a chance.

After that, a curiously diffident Sean Penn sidles out from the wings and peels open the envelope.

And the winner is ... Sandra Bullock for The Blind Side.

"Did I really earn this, or did I just wear you all down?" asks Bullock. I'm guessing that this is a rhetorical question, but there's no time to answer it anyway, because she's off – thanking her fellow nominees, thanking the moms who never get any thanks but ought to because they're great, and then breaking down as this leads her inevitably on to her own mom. It's actually a pretty good speech: warm and fluid, and clearly from the heart. She even thanks those who have been "mean to her in the past" – including George Clooney who she claims to have once pushed her into a swimming pool.

4.55am: It's time for the best director Oscar. Barbra Streisand is on stage and she opens the envelope. A second passes and then history is made. Kathryn Bigelow becomes the first woman to ever take the award for best direction. "It's the moment of a lifetime," she declares.

5am: Right, so Kathryn Bigelow has made history and busted the glass ceiling and all that. But there is no time to digest that, no time to mull over the implications of this mountainous achievement. Because all at once, it's over.

Scuttling out from the wings comes Tom Hanks. He tears open an envelope, says something about Casablanca winning the best picture Oscar back in 1943 and then, without further ado, announces this year's winner.

The crowning prize of this year's Academy Awards goes to ... The Hurt Locker.

5.10am: So that's that. The 82nd annual Academy Awards crawled on its belly through however many hours and then abruptly broke into a sprint. It was past me before I knew it. The Hurt Locker finishes the night with six awards. Avatar limps in some way behind with a final tally of three.

The stage is crammed with producers of The Hurt Locker – all except the unfortunate Nicolas Chartier, who was barred from attending the event (something about a series of impolitic emails) and has presumably been watching events in some downtown sports bar bellowing at the TV and being shushed by the barman. The winners give a shout-out to Chartier, though, so I suppose he is there in spirit.

And with that the 82nd Academy Awards come to an end. It's left to Steve Martin to say the official farewells, looking back over a lengthy night that began with Angela Griffin screaming on the red carpet and ended up with Kathryn Bigelow clutching the statuette and re-writing the record books. "This show was so long that Avatar now takes place in the past," says Martin.

And that sounds about right. This was the night in which a record-breaking $500m behemoth was comprehensively shot down by a low-budget war movie, and when a film that points the way to the future of cinema was (at least momentarily) consigned to history.

Thanks for sticking with me. Apologies as usual for the typos and the errors, the laughing and the screaming. And that's us done and dusted. Is it Mariah Time already? If so, I'm straight off to bed. Roll carpet, roll credits. And please God, no booing. It has an annoying tendency to disturb the deepest slumber.

More on this story

... from behind the cordon, of course. But wait, be dazzled by best actress Sandra Bullock, catch a glimpse of the triumphant Christoph Waltz and marvel at the mighty shoulder-pads of Joan Collins in our Oscars after-parties gallery. Xan Brooks is the virtual belle of the ball

Kathryn Bigelow and co gave him a loving shout-out on Sunday evening as they picked up the Academy Award for best picture; Chartier delivered his own acceptance speech from Malibu yesterday. But who is the man Oscar stopped at the door?

... from behind the cordon, of course. But wait, be dazzled by best actress Sandra Bullock, catch a glimpse of the triumphant Christoph Waltz and marvel at the mighty shoulder-pads of Joan Collins in our Oscars after-parties gallery. Xan Brooks is the virtual belle of the ball

Kathryn Bigelow and co gave him a loving shout-out on Sunday evening as they picked up the Academy Award for best picture; Chartier delivered his own acceptance speech from Malibu yesterday. But who is the man Oscar stopped at the door?